As I am falling, I can tell there is more than snow. There is the supple bend of life, clouds of green that I pass through as I fall, and the uneven jaggedness of growth. But the snow consumes me anyway, pulling me into its murky thickness. It is so dense that I cannot breathe the air between the snowflakes.
And then I hit ground. Real, hard, brown frozen ground. It seems impossible. When was the last time my feet touched ground? My hands touched the earth?
But the snow is slipping. It’s sliding down toward me and I move away from it, against the middle of the space.
And then I realize. It is a trunk against my back, the brittle familiarity of its mottled bark. It clings to me, to my clothes, as the snow rushes toward me and stops. I turn to look at the tree, and there is something odd about it. A wave around the trunk is darker than the rest of the blackness around me, darker than the brown of the trunk itself, darker than the ground, darker than the snow refracting light from way above. I can still see the sky. But this wave of black is deep.
I reach out and touch the soot. I bring my fingers close to my eyes and even in the darkness, I think I can see it. It is familiar, this wave of soot. The way it hugs the tree into a crest. The sharpness of the curve in the trough. I know this tree.
I step around it and my foot snaps on a twig. I look down to see one of Cole’s manufactured friends. And as I bend to reach for it, the snow comes tumbling again. I can feel myself being pulled under, the bubbles rushing away from me, and the light is getting further and further away and I am boring into the water droplets looking for something to hold on to or some kind of answer.
Note:
This is a snippet from the novel I am working on for NaNoWriMo. I hope you enjoy it. I’m documenting my journey each day.
Here’s yesterday’s stats:
Progress:
Day 5 Word Count: 420
Total Word Count: 7107
Where I Planned to Be: 8000
1667 words per day: 8335
Yesterday was supposed to be a day of rest, but an idea came to me and I needed to get it down. Yay for momentum!
How is everyone else doing?
Wow, that’s fabulous!
Thanks so much!
[…] Novel Excerpt from the WIP: A small snippet of The Snow Witch, my current work in progress. It’s a surreal scene in which the main character falls into a tree well. Did you that’s something that’s possible? I love the places novel research can take you. […]